Instead, he was forced to wait as Jaime informed Cricket that she should be more careful and Cricket informed Jaime that she wasn’t scared of anyone, etc. Karl’s gaze wandered from Jaime and Cricket to the front of the lobby, where enormous glass windows showed a view of the street outside.

And the man and the woman in the strange coats that stood watching them with dark and unreadable eyes.

Karl opened his mouth to warn Jaime and Cricket, and was more disappointed than usual when no words came out.

CHAPTER NINE

Tess

Tess was in the middle of a rare and perfectly pleasant dream when her dad bellowed, “Rise and Shineth, for Thy Father Hast Made Thy Breakfast!”

Theo rolled over and fell unceremoniously out of bed with a thud. “Have you been reading Shakespeare again?”

Tess opened one eye and said, “Dad! I was having a good dream for once.”

Her dad peered down at her. “What kind of dream?”

Tess frowned. “I’m trying to remember. There were cats, though.”

Theo sat up. “There’s always a cat.”

Nine mrrowed agreeably and leaped from her spot on Tess’s bed.

“Nine is ready to eat,” said her dad, who was wearing a T-shirt that said WHO’S YOUR LLAMA? with a picture of an alpaca. Theo seemed to be too tired to critique it.

Her dad said, “What about you two? Ready to eat?”

Theo scrubbed at his hair. “What did you make?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“That doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence.”

“Oh, Cry for Him, for He Is Full of Doubt,” their father sang at the top of his lungs. “Come downstairs. You’ve overslept.”

“It’s summer. You can’t oversleep during the summer,” Tess grumbled.

“You most certainly can. Especially when your loving father has prepared a surprise breakfast and it’s getting cold.”

Tess and Theo fought over who got the bathroom first—Tess won—and then dragged themselves downstairs to the kitchen to find stacks of pancakes shaped like . . .

“Uh, Dad, what are these supposed to be?” said Theo.

“What do you mean? You can’t tell?”

He looked so sad that Tess said, “He’s just joking.”

Theo said, “I’m—” but Tess kicked him under the table.

“They’re Morningstarr Machines,” their father said. He pointed at various-sized blobs of pancake arranged on different plates. “See, this one is a Roller, this one is Squeegee, and this one is that new one, that big moth. I wonder where that one went. They had another sighting in the Bronx a couple of weeks ago but that was the last I heard.”

“Looks just like them, Dad,” Tess said.

Theo blinked. Said, “Dad, your shirt says ‘Who’s your llama?’ but I’m pretty sure that’s an alpaca.”

Their dad looked down. “I love this shirt.”

Theo relented, ate a bite of pancake. “Delicious.”